Trade Deadline Eve brought one more significant trade before we all went to bed. The Cincinnati Reds dealt starting pitcher Mike Leake to the San Francisco Giants for a pair of prospects. It’s clear the Giants felt they had to respond to all of the moves that the Dodgers made yesterday and starting pitcher was the most logical place to do it.

San Francisco Gets

SP Mike Leake

Cincinnati Reds Get

SP Keury Mella

IF Adam Duvall

Why the Giants do this trade

This one is a fairly straightforward trade. The Giants rotation gets awfully thin after Madison Bumgarner and Chris Heston. Tim Lincecum is on the disabled list and Tim Hudson is about ready to be put out to pasture. This allows Jake Peavy and Ryan Vogelsong to settle in as the fourth and fifth starters until Lincecum returns. Despite their troubles, the Giants still trail the Dodgers by only half a game.

Leake is an impending free agent, but he has been pitching lights out in his last few outings and he’s moving to a pitcher’s park. He has profiled as a middle of the rotation starter in the past, but if he continues to pitch well he could become a playoff starter. Getting a playoff starter for a couple of prospects is a pretty good deal at the end of the day.

Why the Reds do this trade

The Reds have given up on the season and have their irons in a number of fires before the deadline. They already dealt Johnny Cueto for prospects and now they have gotten a couple more for Leake. The prize of this deal is Keury Mella. MLB.com had ranked him fourth in the Giants system and he should be similarly ranked in the Reds system as well. He is only 21 years old and has advanced to high A ball. He is sporting a 5-3 record with a 3.31 ERA in the California League. The California League has consistently rated as the best hitter’s league in organized baseball.

Adam Duvall is one of those fringy prospects that has already made his big league debut. He’s played first base and third base and really doesn’t seem to have a position. He does have three home runs in 77 plate appearances in San Francisco and might stick as a bench piece, but it is hard to imagine him gaining any traction with Todd Frazier and Joey Votto in place.

What this deal means for you

If you’ve been following the deadline, you know I love to go to baseball-reference.com and cherry pick a couple of numbers to evaluate pitchers on the move. The first one are the ballpark factors. You can get those anywhere and they can be simple or extremely complex. Baseball-reference simply evaluates parks as a run scoring environment. 100 is an average run scoring environment. Baseball-reference uses both 2015 and multi-year data. The differences are obviously pretty stark here.

Great American Ballpark 2015: 108

Great American Ballpark Multi: 101

AT&T 2015: 88

AT&T Multi: 93

When we start looking at differences of more than ten percent we are looking at something significant. The multi-year numbers are usually more helpful and even then we are looking at an eight percent differential. Clearly, Leake is going to be better off in San Francisco on that front. The second number we look at is the defense efficiency rating. It calculates the percentage of balls in play that turn into outs. For those familiar with batting average on balls in play (BABIP), it is essentially the inverse of that.

Cincinnati Reds: .705 (5th)

San Francisco Giants: .703 (7th)

This one appears to be pretty close to a wash. The Giants are one of the few teams Leake could have gone to without getting hurt in BABIP. That being said, a Giants fan may assume that since their fielding is good that Leake would get a bump, but that’s not necessarily the case. Overall, I would say Leake owners should be very happy with the move. He could end the year somewhere in the low threes in terms of earned run average and could end up with close to fifteen victories.